A junta court in Myanmar is expected to deliver verdicts on the ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi in several delayed cases, the latest in a slew of judgments that could see her jailed for decades.
The Nobel laureate has been held since Feb. 1 last year when her government was forced out in an early morning coup, ending the short-lived experiment with democracy in Myanmar.
More than 1,400 civilians were killed in the generals power grab, which caused widespread dissent that security forces tried to quell with mass detentions and bloody crackdowns, according to a local monitoring group.
Suu Kyi, 76, is facing a lot of accusations, and is due to hear the verdicts on Monday for illegal importing and possessing walkies-talkies and breaking coronaviruses.
The walkie-talkies were accused of being involved in a coup when soldiers raided her house on the day of the coup, allegedly discovering the contraband equipment.
According to a source with knowledge of the matter, members of the raiding party admitted they had not possessed a warrant for the raid, despite cross-examination in court hearings.
Verdicts for these cases have been delayed for a long time.
If found guilty on Monday, Suu Kyi faces a maximum of six years in prison.
It will add to the penalties that the court gave her in December when she was jailed for four years for incitement and breaching COVID 19 rules while campaigning.
Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing reduced the sentence to two years and said she could serve her term under house arrest in the capital Naypyitaw.
December s ruling drew international condemnation, and the Myanmar public reverted to old protesting tactics of banging pots and pans in a show of anger.
Manny Maung, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, said that another conviction would deepen nationwide discontent.
She said that the announcement of her last conviction resulted in one of the highest days of social media interactions from inside Myanmar and deeply angered the public. The military is calculating these cases as a fear tactic but it only serves to direct more anger from the public. Journalists have been barred from speaking to the media, and Suu Kyi's lawyers have been muzzled from speaking to the media.
Suu Kyi spent long periods of house arrest in her family mansion in Yangon, Myanmar's largest city under a previous junta regime.
She is confined to an undisclosed location in the capital, with her links to the outside world limited to brief pre-trial meetings with her lawyers.
She is also facing multiple counts of corruption - each of which can be punished by 15 years in jail and of violating the official secrets act, besides Monday s cases.
She and 15 other officials, including Myanmar's president Win Myint, were also charged with alleged electoral fraud during the 2020 elections.
Her National League for Democracy party swept the polls in a landslide, trouncing a military-aligned party by a wider margin than the previous 2015 election.
Many of her political allies have been arrested since the coup, with one chief minister sentenced to 75 years in jail while others are in hiding.